Sunday, December 03, 2017

Heading for a pizza recently I spotted this couple having a smoke outside the Dáil Bar on Middle Street in Galway. The scene reminded me so much of Hopper's painting: the corner location, the Dáil Bar instead of Phillies, the couple with a girl in a red dress, the conversation, the deserted space apart from one bystander, looking elsewhere, caught up in his own thoughts.

Thursday, November 30, 2017

I have been a little quiet of late on the blogging front, mainly because both work and teaching occupy most of my time. Hopefully I will get some more writing done in the New Year. In the meantime would like to wish you and your families a happy and peaceful Christmas season as well as a prosperous and adventurous New Year.

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Rihla (The Journey) – was the
short title of a 14th Century (1355 CE) book written in Fez by the Islamic
legal scholar Ibn Jazayy al-Kalbi of Granada who recorded and then transcribed
the dictated travelogue of the Tangerian, Ibn Battuta. The book’s full title
was A Gift to Those who Contemplate the
Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling and somehow the title of
Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos of many of the city and country journeys I
have been lucky to take in past years.

Some of the best journeys you can take are those
closest to you. This Rihla is about the island hermitage of St Sionnach MacDara
(on the island od Cruach na Cara a.k.a. Cruach Mhic Dara or Oileán Mhic Dara),
the patron saint of Connemara fishermen, that is located off the south-west
coast of Connemara near Mace Head and the annual fishermen’s pilgrimage to the
island held on the 16th July every year.

Little is known about the
life of St. Sionnach MacDara and yet he is venerated in a very significant way
on Iorras Aithneach (Iar Ros Ainbthech – Western Promontory
of the Storms), the Carna Peninsula in south Connemara. His ecclesiastical
feast day is listed in O’Hanlon’s Lives of the Irish Saints as being on
September 28 and yet Connemara fishermen also perform an intensely secular patrún or pattern in his honour on their
turas or pilgrimage to the island on
the 16th July every year, weather permitting. In addition to the Oratory church on the island there is a church dedicated to him in Moyrus and also a Holy Well.

Not bad for an almost
unknown saint.

Tradition associated with St Mac Dara meant that any fishing boat passing through the sound between Masson Island and MacDara had to lower their sails three times (modern boats with outboard motors still cut their motors in respect of the tradition) otherwise bad luck would hit them.

His given or forename Sionnach means fox, but Tim Robinson in his
book, Connemara – A Little Gaelic Kingdom feels it should be Síonach which means a storm or stormy
weather, and very appropriate as MacDara is one of the two saints associated with the Iorras Aithneach (of the storms) peninsula.

What is most likely is
that Sionnach MacDara was a monk or cenobite
in one of the early or mid-6th century St Enda’s, St Brecan’s or St Ciaran’s
monasteries on Inishmore of the Aran islands. St Enda is considered the father
of Irish monasticism and his foundations followed the asceticism of the
Egyptian “desert Fathers”, living in community but with a life dictated by
manual labour, study and prayer. St Ciarán Mac an tSaeir (of Clonmacnoise fame)
is the other major saint associated with the Conmaicne Mara tribal area of
Ioras Aithneach and perhaps this points to MacDara being a cenobite in his
Inishmore monastery and they may have left the Aran islands around the same time, circa
541 CE, with MacDara heading to establish his “hermitage” island off Mace Head and Ciarán
joining Senan on Scattery Island at the mouth of the Shannon before moving inland and founding Clonmacnoise.

Landing at Aill na hIomlachta

(The Rock of the Ferrying)

Looking East South East

The 6th century
saw the rise of the Irish “island hermit” tradition, such as that seen separate
to the main complex on Skellig Michael (see Rihla 63) on the south peak; on Church Island near
Valentia, Co Kerry; on Inismurray in Co. Sligo; or on High Island off NW Connemara
where cenobites wanting to remove themselves from the community moved to almost
inaccessible islands to become “Green Martyrs” (as distinct from Red Martyrs
who were killed for the “cause” – very few instances in early Christian or
pre-Viking 9th C Ireland) . The difficulty is often that these type
of ascetic hermits then attract a community to themselves hoping to
partake in the holiness and this is what appears to have happened on St
MacDara’s Island.

The oratory, which is a
corbelled stone roofed rectangular church was beautifully restored by the OPW
in the 1970’s, a restoration first mooted by R.A. Macalister in a paper
presented to the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland in 1895, following his
visit to the island, “A very little outlay would put the whole structure in
sound state, and doubtless, preserve it for another 1200 years.”

Of note Macalister in his
visit, found lying face down one of the carved finials that previously had been attached to the apex of the east
gable end. The native fishermen of the 1800s considered the carved head in the
centre of the stone to be that of St. MacDara himself. This finial (and
presumably the other at the western end) subsequently went missing and was
nowhere to be found when the OPW went about restoring the Oratory. There is
some difficulty in accurately dating the church with some authorities believing
that originally the roof was a wooden construct and that sometime later,
perhaps after the main Viking incursions had settled down, the roof was remade
of more weather resistant (and available) stone. What is important is that
“mouse-ear” carved finials were a feature of early Christian monastic
gable-ends as depicted in the Temptation of Christ in the late 8th C
Book of Kells.

The carved finials as depicted in the Book of Kells. Finials are decorative carvings or pediments placed at the apex of towers (like a cross on a church bell tower or a crescent moon on a mosque minaret), or on the gable end apexes.

The carved gable-end
finials were also a feature of some early “chapel-like” reliquaries such as the
Monymusk casket of St Columba and indeed the gable struts of early 3rd or 4th century BCE Germanic North Sea wooden longhouses may have influenced the design as well as being the direct forerunner of the wooden gable-end cross-beamed curved apexes of the Scandinavian longhouses. What is not in dispute is that the replacement
finials commissioned by the OPW are very fine carvings and are weathering very well.

I went to the island on
the 16th July this year, landing with the first boat of the day. The
festival is now called Féile Mhic Dara and this year I reckoned about 1200-1500
people made it to the island and with the marketing of the Wild Atlantic Way
being such a success the numbers are only going to get bigger and I suspect
that at some point the traditional and “good-humoured” free ferrying of
pilgrims to the island by local fishermen (remember to bring your own, or borrowed,
lifejacket flotation device ­ – not mandatory but important) will come under
pressure.

Unfortunately I was on
call and had to head back to the mainland just before the mass began and I was
unable to observer how many people still might have maintained the ancient
tradition of a seven times circumambulation of the chapel and the placing of
seven pebbles on the altar. I had hoped to see this done, and perhaps ask a
participant why he or she still did it. As a custom it would echo the penitent tawaf circumambulation of the Kaba in
Mecca, (and perhaps also the Stoning of the Devil) and be an echo of the
Middle-Eastern tradition of Early Christian monastic communities that gave rise
to the stylites of Syria and the island hermits of the west coast of Ireland such
as Sionnach MacDara.

Even
without this oblique association between the patrúns of East and West I found the geography, the historical
context, the convergence of the Galway Bay hookers at the small harbour, the
gathering of fishermen’s families from all over Connemara speaking Irish, the
gathering of the sky and sea on an ancient landscape, the acceptance of tourist
pilgrims, and finally the architecture of the conversation between mankind and
God absolutely fascinating, all of them speaking to a distant time and place…
in the now.

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Rihla
(The Journey) – was the short title of a 14th
Century (1355 CE) book written in Fez by the Islamic legal scholar Ibn Jazayy
al-Kalbi of Granada who recorded and then transcribed the dictated travelogue
of the Tangerian, Ibn Battuta. The book’s full title was A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels
of Travelling and somehow the title of Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos
of many of the city and country journeys I have been lucky to take in past
years.

Some of the most
interesting journeys you can take are those that are accidental, unplanned,
happenstance almost; where the outcome, because of a decision to undertake that journey then becomes not so much a revelation but “enlightening”. This Rihla is about “METAMORPHOSIS”, the transfiguration of an individual and place in the course and cause of revolution.

METAMORPHOSIS

I found myself sitting, happenstance, on a hot late June day, out of the heat, in the
small covered portico of the ancient Church of the Metamorphosis (Μεταμωρψδη – Transfiguration)
on the road between Chora (Χωρα) and Messini in the SW Peloponnese. Why stop here, I wondered. I had
intended visiting the Mycenaean Nestor’s Palace ruins as well as the museum in
Chora, but forgot it was a Monday and that the archaeological attractions were
closed for the day. It is wonderful, I thought while biting into a
succulent peach, when travelling or exploring to lose track not just of time but of entire
days. Given my surroundings I should have perhaps switched to the modified post-Byzantine Revised Julian calendar of the Orthodox Church rather than its Roman Gregorian replacement. Perhaps I could have metamorphosed the day of the week!Where
to next, I wondered aloud?

Church of Metamorphosis,

Metamorphosis, Messenia, Greece

The old church was very basic in its construct, a very “still” place,
and almost certainly an early physical manifestation of hesychastic Eastern
Orthodox doctrine. The Metamorphosis or Transfiguration of Christ as depicted
in the Gospels is a major component of Eastern Orthodoxy, one of the twelve
feasts. Indeed there is a suggestion that in contrast to the Roman Catholic
church’s primary theological ceremonial emphasis, that marking the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Eastern Orthodox church’s most important
theological celebration, is now that of Jesus Christ’s (mankind’s) encounter
(transfiguration) with the Divine Light on Mt. Thabor. It is a theological contrast between
a theology of fear and a theology of enlightenment.

Transfiguration mosaic from

St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai.

Choosing enlightenment I took out my Anavasi 1:80,000 topographical map
of Messinia to scan the road ahead. Not far away was the village of Maniaki and
slightly beyond it there was depicted on the map a Church dedicated to the Holy
Trinity at a place called Tampouria. My translator said that this was the word
for a military "breastwork" or redoubt. On the map there was an associated legend of a small
Greek flag but the Legends section of the map did not detail what these small
Greek flags indicated. I suspected, but was not certain, they indicated a site associated with heroes
or events of the Greek Wars of Independence. There were similar flags on the
village of Nedoussa (where Nikitaras Stamatelopoulos, the “Turk-eater” was
born) to the east in the foothills of the Taygetus mountains – which I had passed close
to a few days previously on my way to Mystras – and also further north in Ano Psari and Pamoboyni.

I left the old Church of the Metamorphosis behind me, turned left at the
Touloupa Chani junction and winded my way up the road to Maniaki. On that stretch
I passed a observation post for the rural fire service with an attendant fire
tender parked ready on standby. From that spur of the Egaleo mountains the
firemen could survey the entire territory southwards towards Kalamata to the
east and Pylos to the west, and thus be able to intervene early in any fire
outbreak.

For a similar reason of good visibility, further up the mountain just
beyond the village of Maniaki, Gregorias Dikaios a.k.a. Papaflessas, Orthodox
priest, revolutionary fighter and Minister for the Interior and Chief of Police
since 1822 in the Provisional Administration of Greece established his redoubt,
built his breastworks, and on the May 20, 1825 met his death confronting the
army of Ibrahim Pasha.

Papaflessas Memorial Tampouria, Messina, Greece

REVOLUTION AND
METAMORPHOSIS

“Of
these agitators the best known and most influential was the Archimandrite
Dikaios, popularly known as Pappa Phlesas, a priest whose morals were a scandal
to the church, as his peculations were to the national cause, yet, for all
that, a brave man, as he proved by his heroic death on the field of battle.”

W. Alison Philips (1897)

The War of Greek
Independence

1821 to 1833

Georgis “Papaflessas” Flessas a.k.a. Gregorius Dikaios was born in 1788
in Poliani village, located about 21km north of Kalamata in the Vromovriseika
Mts. The village was also the birthplace of Christos “Anagnostaras” Koromilas.
His family were descendants of klephts,
mountain outlaws who continuously opposed the Ottoman occupiers of Greece.

Papaflessas Memorial Tampouria, Messina, Greece

Young George Flessas from an early age was determined to root out the
Ottomans and get under their skin. While attending the famous school at
Dimitsana he published a satire against the local Turk governor and had to
quickly “disappear” for his own safety into the monastery at Velandia, where he
decided to become a priest and took the monastic name Gregory Dikaois. Even
there, and also when asked to leave because of his argumentative bent, at his
next port of call in the monastery of Rekitsa he was turbulent, fighting with
his superiors, and with local administrators. Accused of treason he disappeared
to Zakynthos for a time before finally making it to Constantinople, being
ordained into the highest rank of priesthood, and beginning his formal
revolutionary metamorphosis by joining the secret Filiki Eteria organisation that had been established in Odessa in
1814 and run along Freemasonry lines with the leaders calling themselves the
“Invisible Authority”.

Once ordained Papaflessas was dispatched as a “missionary” and spent
1819 and 1820 preaching Greek independence rather than theology in Wallachia. By
January 1821 he was back “home” in the Kalamata area initiating members into
the Filiki Eteria and organising
revolutionary meetings. On
the 23rd March 1821 Papaflessas, Nikitaras, Anagnostaras made their
way from the Monastery of Mardaki to Almyros Kalamata to take delivery of a
landing of military supplies. Although there is some dispute about when and
where the Greek War of Independence (1821-1832) began but March 25, 1821 is the
official date.

church of Holy Trinity, Tampouria, Messinia, Greece

This dispute
over who did what, how much and when they did it, was and is a feature of the Greek War of
Independence's multi-layered historiography. What is not in dispute are the
atrocities, the ethnic cleansing, the indiscriminate rape, torture, and
extermination of men, women and children conducted by both sides, but by the
Greek side in particular during the early phases. This cleansing was conducted with an enormous ferocity and
appetite for vengeance and in many cases unappeased Greek blood-lust was also to be
subsequently directed against themselves. Indeed unlike most countries where a
Civil War between opponents of the “road ahead” usually followed the original
War of Independence, as in the US or in Ireland, the Greek War of Independence from
the Ottoman Porte was characterised by being conducted at the same time as two internal
Greek Civil Wars between 1824-1825.

Navarino Bay from North. The Venetian Paelokastro on top

of headland to right of picture. In distance is Pylos where the Navarino neokastro is.

In middle is Voidokilia Beach and beyond on right Sfaktiria Island.

Despite fighting
alongside the famous freedom fighter Theodoras Kolokotronis at the Greek
victorious battle of Dervenakia in July 1822, Papaflessas, as he was now known
in a nom de guerre, accepted as
Gregorius Dikaios the post of Minister of Internal Affairs and Chief of Police
in the first Provisional Greek independent government. In that position as
Minister of Internal Affairs he had to sanction the capture and imprisonment on
Hydra in February 1825 of his friend and commander Kolokotronis, as a consequence
of Kolokotronis’ civil war opposition to the new administration.

On February 24,
1825 Ibrahim Pasha, the son of the ruler of Egypt and at the request of the
Ottoman Sultan, landed in Modon (Methoni) with 4,000 infantry and 500 cavalry and
a month later was joined by a further 6,000 French trained and battle-hardened Egyptian
infantry, as well as 500 cavalry, to confront and supress the nascent Greek
revolution.

1880's Map

On the 19th
April 1825 an irregular force of 7,000 Greeks and Albanians under Skourti, set
out to try and intercept Ibrahim’s advance as well as trying to relieve the
garrisons in the Neokastro in Pylos and on Sfaktiria but were routed by the
discipline of Ibrahim’s Arabs and forced to retreat. Unimpeded Ibrahim captured
the old Navarino fortress (paleokastro) to the north of Navarino bay on the 29th
April, Sfaktiria island on the 8th May and finally the new Navarino
castle at Pylos on the 11th May. Anagnostaras, Papaflessas
fellow-villager and friend, was killed in the defence of Sfaktiria.

Following these
set-backs and recognising the extreme danger posed by Ibrahim’s campaign to
establishing the new independent Greece Papaflessas pleaded with his colleagues
to release Kolokotronis so that he may command an army to confront Ibrahim
Pasha. The Interim Government refused and Papaflessas stated that he would take
and lead an army himself to make a stand. The Government were more than willing
to allow their truculent Interior Minister to depart. Always the showman Papaflessas marched off to his destiny accompanied by his two mistresses.

Looking North from Tampouria, Greece

Papaflessas
arrived and after discussing with villagers the best place to observe the plains dug into three positions above the village of Maniaki, erecting temporary breastworks on the karst
exposed hills, with about 3,000 troops. He instructed that the Breastworks (Tampouria) be set on the oblique and not the crest of the hills as this made them easier to defend. One of the three main positions was commanded by his nephew and he was expecting his brother to join him with about 700 more infantry. During the night of the 19th
May 1825, the night before the Battle of Maniaki, about 2,000 of the Greeks
melted away when they perceived the size of Ibrahim’s force camped in the
valley below them. The following morning one column under Ibrahim Pasha's French commander took the easterly approach and Ibrahim pasha the westerly, splitting his own detachment in two to meet up again for the final assault on Papaflessas' position. Papaflessas vowed to die where he stood in defence of
Greek independence. His wish for martyrdom was granted and he and 600 of his
troops lost their lives, including his nephew, an Italian volunteer and his flag-carrier.

Some reports state that Ibrahim Pasha kissed the head (decapitated)

of Papaflessas in honour.

Following the battle Ibrahim sought out his headless
body and head of his adversary and set these upright up on a post once the body
parts had been cleaned. This was an act of honouring his opponent and he is reported
to have said, concerning Papaflessas,

“That was a brave and honourable man! Better have
spent twice as many lives to save his; he would have served us well.”

Unlikely! Pappaflessas would have continued in whatever guise to be a “turbulent” priest. Papaflessas
metamorphosis, a bit like that of Henry VIII’s Beckett, from truculent priest
to martyrdom had been achieved and today is marked, is remembered, by a blue
Greek flag, a collective memory, on a map and on the ground.

TAMPOURIA

The actual
Battle of Maniaki took place about 4 km north of Maniaki on a small hill now
known as Tampouria. Tampouria derives from Ταμποúρια a Greek word that defines
a temporary or hastily erected Military fortification known as a breastwork or
sconce. A signpost indicating its position, is nestled in a grove of tall
Cypresses, about 2km beyond the turn-off for the village of Maniaki. There is a
short winding road to an open parking area and then perhaps the most
beautifully constructed external stairway I encountered in Greece.

Icons and Imperial Byzantine Eagle on Candle Box.

The official flag of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul, which

represents the Orthodox community worldwide

is a double-headed eagle holding an orb and a cross. In this church the eagle

is holding two orbs, while outside fluttering in the wind is the more recently

adopted, and a more belligerent flag, with the eagles holding an orb and a sword,

rather than a cross. (The double-headed eagle was originally a Hittite 14C BCE motif and was adopted by the Byzantine Palaiologan dynsaty when they wrested back control of

Byzantium from the Latins in 1250s)

After a short
climb you encounter the 1975 refurbished Church of the Holy Trinity. Through a
window can be seen the icons as well as the Byzantine imperial flag adopted by
many Greek orthodox churches. Outside the Greek flag on its pole flutters in
the late afternoon wind, and as well as an obelisk, there is upright stone
engraved memorial slab to the fallen as well as a black stone sculpture of
Papaflessas.

To the east and
below behind the sculpture are the alonia (drying floors) of the joint villages
of Ano and Kato Papaflessas, formerly known as Kondogoni, but renamed in his perpetual honour. Bones from the battle were gathered and are in an ossuary in the Church of the Resurrection on an outcrop east of Maniaki village.

Tampouria I found to be a strange place. In the middle of an ancient landscape well used to glorious death many Greeks considered Maniaki to be a 19th century Thermopylae, and Papaflessas to be Leonides. A natural rampart which for a brief moment in time held the hopes of a nation, and of its defenders within its hastily erected stone redoubts... and then let them go.

Papaflessas

For Papaflessas perhaps Tampouria was his Mt. Tabor. The statue depicts a proud, defiant man and is a sculpture that engages your eye, framed by the sky and the rocks, of the place
where he lost his life defending his ideals of Greece, of a place where perhaps he finally found enlightenment...and was at peace.